Perry says no Medicaid expansion in Texas

Former presidential hopeful Rick Perry became the next in a line of Republican governors Monday to declare he will not implement key provisions of the Affordable Care Act, including insurance exchanges and the Medicaid expansion.

“If anyone had any doubt,” Governor Perry assured viewers in an interview on Fox News, “we wanted to put it clearly to bed that Texas wasn’t going to be a part of expanding socializing of our medicine.”

Texas was one of the 26 original states that filed a lawsuit against Obamacare, claiming the individual mandate and the Medicaid expansion requirements were unconstitutional. Though the states lost the battle over the mandate, which was upheld under the government’s taxing authority, the Supreme Court agreed on their quarrel with Medicaid and gave states the choice to opt out of the expansion.